RNC's Immigration Bamboozle

By Justin Rood - April 14, 2006, 4:39 PM

The GOP is claiming that Democrats have voted to make illegal immigration a felony crime. Exactly the opposite is the case. Ken Mehlman's RNC is even running ads based on this lie.

Here's what happened: Late last year GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wrote and sponsored a bill that makes illegal immigration a felony. It's currently a civil offense.

After he got the bill out of committee, it caused such a hue and cry that Sensenbrenner tried to backpedal, and offered an amendment to soften his language, and make illegal immigration just a misdemeanor crime. (That's still worse than a civil offense.)

Over 190 Democrats joined 65 Republicans in voting against that amendment because they didn't think it should be criminalized at all.
The bill went to the floor with the felony language included; it passed on overwhelming Republican support.

The RNC wouldn't return my calls, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) office was closed. When I reached a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), he told me that the GOP claim was based on the committee's vote on the amendment: "It was based on the 191 dems voting on the Sensenbrenner amendment to change it from a felony to a misdemeanor."

So while a GOP Chairman came up with the idea of making immigration a felony, introduced a bill to make it a felony, and pushed it through the House on Republican votes, the Democrats' refusal even to make it a misdemeanor means they're the ones who want to make it a felony.